Slush 2015http://www.slush.org
Slush is the focal point for entrepreneurs and tech talent to meet with top-tier international investors, executives and media. Slush 2015 takes place on November 11-12th in Helsinki, Finland.Mon, 27 Jul 2015 13:11:26 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2Enevo Raises Funding Round of $15.8Mhttp://www.slush.org/enevo-raises-15-8m-funding/
http://www.slush.org/enevo-raises-15-8m-funding/#commentsTue, 30 Jun 2015 11:56:41 +0000http://www.slush.org/?p=17254The Espoo, Finland based startup Enevo has just announced raising a $15.8 million funding round led by Foxconn, Ginko Ventures and Mistletoe. Enevo’s funding round is the fourth biggest B round in the Nordics over the past four years and the second biggest B round in a startup in Finland since Supercell’s B round in 2013.

Enevo provides a fully automated solution for waste logistics operations management, Enevo ONe. It uses wireless sensors to measure and forecast the fill-level of waste containers and generates smart collection plans. According to the company, the solution provides up to 50% in direct cost savings.

The company has earlier secured $10.3 million funding in 2012 and 2013 by Earlybird, Lifeline Ventures, Finnish Industry Investment and private individuals. Enevo’s newest investment is the fourth largest series B investment in the Nordics over the past four years. Only Supercell and Truecaller raised larger growth financing at bigger valuations. Supercell is now worth a rumoured $5.5 billion, while Truecaller is closing in on the $1 billion mark.

Enevo, founded in 2010, has attended Slush for several years. In 2013, the founder and CEO of the company, Fredrik Kekäläinen, talked about their future to Slush News: “We get our kicks from knowing that we can and will transform the traditional industry to the better. Seeing how smart technology and new perspective can bring benefits for everyone is truly exciting. We feel what we do has real value and eventually touches everyone – globally.”

Enevo’s new investors include Mistletoe, a private company owned by the Japanese serial entrepreneur Taizo Son, who bought 51% of Supercell’s shares together with his brother Masayoshi Son in 2013, and Foxconn, a Taiwanese company known as the manufacturer of iPads, iPhones, Kindles and more. Ginko Ventures, founded in 2015, is a venture capital firm focusing primarily on European and Israeli companies.

“Enevo’s team has made its global vision a reality with focused execution and smart waste logistics systems already running from the US to Japan. This is in full alignment with the type of company that Ginko is passionately seeking to back. IoT will transform many industries, and Enevo’s plug-and-play solution and frictionless business model are truly changing the waste management industry”, comments Jean-Francois Baril, founder and managing partner at Ginko Ventures.

“With Foxconn as a strategic partner, we can make a paradigm shift in our wireless sensor hardware development and to expand solution to additional verticals globally. Mistletoe opens up a broad network in Japan, one of our focus markets, as well as globally in the IoT, smart city and telecoms industries”, adds Kekäläinen.

In addition to Espoo, Enevo nowadays has offices in Boston, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Japan and Germany.

]]>http://www.slush.org/enevo-raises-15-8m-funding/feed/0Announcing Impact 2015http://www.slush.org/announcing-impact-2015/
http://www.slush.org/announcing-impact-2015/#commentsFri, 12 Jun 2015 07:30:03 +0000http://www.slush.org/?p=17082First organized in 2014, Slush Impact returns with a more ambitious program to boost global changemakers’ work for a more sustainable and equal planet.

World-leading speakers

”We so often don’t realize what our action and inaction does to people that we think we will never see and never know.” – Jacqueline Novogratz

This year we are proud to announce Jacqueline Novogratz as our first keynote speaker. Back in the 1980s an unexpected encounter in Rwanda showed Jacqueline that people all around the world are interconnected. Today she is one of the most impactful women in attacking poverty with business. Her global venture fund Acumen has invested over $88M in 82 companies delivering healthcare, housing, education and energy to low-income societies in South Asia and Africa.

We are as excited to reveal three more engaging Impact speakers who will be joining us in slushy Helsinki: UNICEF Innovation Unit lead Chris Fabian, tech innovator Wayan Vota and seasoned emerging markets investor Ruzgar Barisik. On top of marginalized children’s rights Fabian is passionate about equal access to information and connectivity as a human right. Wayan is decoding the world of technology to bring value to international development projects. Ruzgar leads IFC’s venture investments in Europe, Middle East & North Africa.

OK cool, but what’s in it for me?

Created together with our skilled partners, Slush Impact will feature a number of events before and during Slush, catering for the different impact ecosystem players.

The program will include plenty of opportunities for impact and emerging market investors to find the next world changing entrepreneurs – and for startups to connect with world leading investors. Match-making tool, side events and networking sessions will help startups to pitch their business to the International Finance Corporation’ Venture Capital team (part of the World Bank Group), Acumen, Tekes BEAM and our other impact and emerging market investors.

Variety of side events

Collaboration with UNICEF will bring a number of key development actors to join Slush. We are excited to welcome these passionate development innovators to join in the conference for finding new scalable solutions to global challenges.

With Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Infodev / World Bank Group we launch a week long Impact Accelerator program. Together with local hubs, 30 impact entrepreneurs will join us from emerging markets such as Nigeria, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Brazil. Stay tuned for news about the selected startups participating this pioneer accelerator!

For the non-profits and impact startups, we will host a Fail Festival together with Plan Finland to break the taboo around innovation and failure in development co-operation. With Plan we will also arrange an intimate, high-level discussion forum ”Technology Salon” focusing on ICT and development.

Join us today!

Check out the brand new Impact site for more information – and get your ticket here!

The winner of last year’s Slush 100, Enbrite.ly, has announced closing an investment round of 750 000 euros from Evli Bank, SpeedInvest and a business angel consortium consisting of FiBAN business angels. Evli Bank and the FiBAN angels offered 500 000 euros to Enbrite.ly after winning Slush 100, and SpeedInvest added another 250 000 euros to the seed round during the spring of 2015.

The Hungary-based company is aiming to make online traffic sources as transparent as possible by stopping ad fraud. According to the Enbrite.ly team, the investment will be mainly used to marketing and accelerating international growth.

”What impressed us in Enbrite.ly during Slush 100 was their functioning business model and awareness of the market. Not to mention the team, which is extremely promising and ambitious,” describes Riku Asikainen, Chairman of FiBAN and lead investor of the angel syndicate in Enbrite.ly.

Enbrite.ly took part in Slush after attending the Startup Sauna accelerator in October. The company was also one of the best in the program and was awarded with a trip to Silicon Valley to visit at get to know the local startup scene.

”Winning Slush 100 was an incredible experience. We came to Finland in October to take part in Startup Sauna and ended up winning Slush 100 just a month later with Gergő’s great pitch. Who could have thought that one month in Helsinki would push our business forward so quickly!”, comments Oszkár Rimóczi, CEO of Enbrite.ly.

Warm congrats to everyone at Enbrite.ly! The application for this year’s Slush 100 is open. You can apply by registering your company to Slush here.

Photos by Samuli Pentti

]]>http://www.slush.org/winner-slush-100-pitching-competition-announces-e750k-investment/feed/0Digital Health in Finland: What’s next?http://www.slush.org/digital-health-finland-whats-next/
http://www.slush.org/digital-health-finland-whats-next/#commentsThu, 18 Dec 2014 07:50:38 +0000http://highway.slush.org/?p=14645We’ve all got back to reality after a whirlwind few days at Slush a month ago. Looking back at what happened at the event, it’s not hard to notice that once again digital health was one of the hottest and biggest themes. Nobody seems to question anymore that health technology in Finland and the Nordics has a great potential. The real question is: what’s next?

HealthSPA: Building the Community

Sébastien Gianelli and Kenneth Salonius are co-founders of HealthSPA, the Finnish health and wellness startup cluster that has been closely involved in organizing the health track at Slush for the last two years. We’ve caught up with them to find out what’s next in digital health.

200 companies are currently part of HealthSPA cluster and 176 health startups attended Slush 2014. “Compared to the last year, the numbers have gone up significantly,” says Salonius. According to the HealthSPA co-founders, the fact that health and wellness was the biggest theme this year at Slush validates that digital health will be the next big thing coming from Finland.

HealthSPA aims to boost the Finnish health and wellness startup ecosystem by organising events and connecting the participants. “Our main goal is to make people think of Finland as the place to establish a health or wellness startup. We want to turn Finland into a hub and make the local innovation, talent and products visible on the international scale,” shares Gianelli.

“We are such a small country that only by working together can we achieve something big,” adds Salonius.

According to HealthSPA, the community has grown stronger since the last year. Many startups are discussing the ways they can work together. “The fact that people start to realize that they need to collaborate and work together tells that the sector is developing and it has taken the next stage.”

It seems that there is increasing interest to join the ecosystem not only among entrepreneurs but also from the research sector and corporates. Anders Stenbäck of If, a leading insurance company in the Nordics, announced on the Slush stage that they are very interested in the health startup scene and therefore have decided to collaborate with HealthSPA.

Giants like GE Healthcare also recognize that the region has an outstanding pool of talent in health with a great potential – GE Healthcare recently opened Health Innovation Village in Helsinki that currently serves as a co-working space for health startups.

While Health Innovation Village focuses solely on medical startups, HealthSPA isn’t that selective – they welcome to their family anyone from fitness tracking apps to diagnostics tools.

But for HealthSPA to get where they want to, they say that they’ll have to strengthen collaboration in the community and get more big players like GE Healthcare and If involved in the ecosystem. There’s no doubt more angel investors and big players will jump on the digital health bandwagon in Finland, but how soon?

The Finnish Government Wants to Invest in the Health Sector

The Finnish government is also looking at digital health as an important sector for the country’s economic growth.

Minna Hendolin, Executive Director at Tekes, Finland’s funding agency for innovation, says that health sector is one of the strategic areas for them. For example, one of the recently launched Tekes programs Bits of Health offers funding, coaching, networking and internationalization opportunities for startups in the health domain.

“It’s very obvious that health is a growing business in a global sense. In Finland, we have invested a considerable amount of funding during past decades into the health research and we have very strong knowledge at our universities. We also have strong expertise in IT. When we combine these elements and knowledge we can build something unique and competitive on the global scale. Especially now we need to be brave and create new things and not only rely on traditional business areas,” points out Hendolin.

One of the special targets in the area of health tech for Tekes is the US, according to Hendolin: “We’ve been building strategic partnerships in Boston with the focus on genomics and bioinformatics and in California especially in relation to the consumer health IT.” This and last year Tekes organized trips to California with their companies.

Health Startups to Keep an Eye On

Of course, the main driver of innovation are startups themselves. Let’s have a look at some of them. You can also read more here.

NetMedi

The Finnish startup NetMedi has created a digital solution that enhances the communication between cancer patients, nurses and doctors. It lets patients and their care team follow up on the progress and outcomes of the treatment. In essence, the platform creates an effortless way for patients to contact medical professionals.

The solution is currently used in hospitals in Finland, Sweden and Switzerland, with Germany as the next market to enter.

The company says they have developed the product in close collaboration with hospitals, which illustrates that willingness to collaborate in the health ecosystem can lead to great outcomes.

According to Lauri Sippola, CEO of NetMedi, the main advantage of NetMedi’s product is that it is a patient driven system. Most software systems in healthcare are the ones used by medical staff.

“We meet with patients using the system and they all are very excited. This makes communication with their care team much easier. Previously all remote communication was done through emails, text messages and phone calls. Now everything is documented in one place,” says Sippola.

Cortrium

Cortrium is an interesting example of a Nordic health startup founded in 2013 as a spin-off from the former Nokia R&D department in Copenhagen. At the moment, Cortrium is based at the Grants4apps Bayer Accelerator in Berlin.

Cortrium has created a medical wearable device that is worn on a patient’s chest using electrodes and connects to a smartphone transmitting scientific metrics about a patient’s body. The Cortrium cloud service lets doctors or physicians remotely track patients’ vital signs, such as heart rate, respiratory rate and skin surface temperature, and monitor their health condition.

The access to present and past patient data allows healthcare professionals to make smarter decisions.

Compared to traditional large, uncomfortable and expensive machines that hospitals currently use, the Cortrium device is more affordable – it currently comes with a €500 price tag. It is also much more comfortable to wear and it only weighs 30 grams.

Sooma

Sooma is a medical startup that has created a portable brain stimulation product for the treatment of depression. Putting it simply, the co-founders of Sooma explain that the device uses weak electrical currents to modulate the brain activity and reduce depression symptoms.

The company has just received the CE mark meaning that they’ve got enough clinical data for treating major depression disorder and their device can be sold and marketed inside the EU. “This is the major step for us as we are the first manufacturer of this kind of technology that has the CE mark,” says CEO of Sooma Tuomas Neuvonen.

Slush 2014 has been and gone, time to look forward. If this young but very ambitious community keeps on pushing hard, chances are that at Slush 2015 we will celebrate a lot of new success stories in health.

Photos by Kai Kuusisto

]]>http://www.slush.org/digital-health-finland-whats-next/feed/0What Went Down at #slush14 Instagramhttp://www.slush.org/instaslush-2/
http://www.slush.org/instaslush-2/#commentsSun, 23 Nov 2014 15:44:18 +0000http://www.slush.org/?p=14449Slush took over Instagram with over 3000 pictures over the course of the two days. From hardworking volunteers to excited startups – pictures say more than a thousand words!

The venue amazed many visitors – lleppala captured the beautiful lights of the Black Stage!

Slush is nothing without the volunteers! This year over 1300 volunteers worked day and night to make it the best Slush yet. This crew kept their smile for the camera in hennacristina‘s photo.

The Supercell party on Tuesday was a blast – here’s tiklish in party spirits!

This year Slush had over 300 speakers during the two days – here is Linda Liukas talking about Hello Ruby captured by rytimahti.

Mikafilm snapped a picture of Slush’s this year’s closing party with the Transfluent at Kaiku. It was a night remember, but luckily there is always next year. See you then!

]]>http://www.slush.org/instaslush-2/feed/0Tech is the easy part – and we have no idea where it’s goinghttp://www.slush.org/tech-easy-part-idea-its/
http://www.slush.org/tech-easy-part-idea-its/#commentsWed, 19 Nov 2014 20:17:10 +0000http://www.slush.org/?p=14502“Tech is the easy part”, is the outspoken claim of LindaRaftree, TanyaAccone and MikaVälitalo on Slush Impact stage Wednesday morning. Content used to be king, but now he’s been replaced. It’s “people-ware” that can make or break an innovation.

The three impact-makers emphasize context, which has “deposed content”, as Accones puts it. We shouldn’t just assume people in emerging markets want simple basic products that are inexpensive – or “cheap junk”, another of Accone’s depictions. You need to understand the people, including their desire for style and usability, to be able to make a business succeed.

Understanding people in emerging markets is also a concern for Nicholas Haan, Director for Global Grand Challenges at Singularity University. He talks about changing the world with exponential technologies – and how we often assume development to be linear, something we can extrapolate from the past. However, technologies tend to be exponential, and take off at a point that analyses based on the past often cannot predict.

We most likely know the consequences of exponential technologies best from digitalization – of, for example, photographs. Haan talks about the “new Kodak moment”, which takes place when companies fail to act fast and boldly enough to new trends, and start to lose their value. This is hardly a completely foreign phenomenon for us Finns, either.

But why this enthusiasm towards exponential technologies, and why do they matter? The answer is simple for Haan: because a billion people on this globe go to bed hungry and don’t have clean water or proper schooling. “We have massive problems, and we need system-level solutions to solve them.” Nothing else will suffice.

But don’t be fooled by his praise for technologies: Haan is not a tech freak. He calls himself a “technology schizophrenic” (as opposed to tech lover, enthusiast or disbeliever). He goes from one end to the other when it comes to a crucial question that I play with with him: where do these technologies take us? Maybe as for right now, they are the most practical and fruitful source to look for things that can provide us with answers to the biggest questions of our time.

Perhaps the most interesting thing in technology, nevertheless, is something that technology doesn’t give to us, but actually demands from us. It’s a level of equality and democracy we haven’t seen before.

“Today, you and me in Western countries can do crazy things in the Internet”, Haan leads. We can create almost anything, using information available to all of us. Like robots. This is today for us, and tomorrow for a kid in Kongo. And tomorrow is soon.

“When the kid in Kongo can build a robot, what will he do with it? What will he do when he can build a virus?”, Haan wonders with a slightly worried face. The crucial questions is what we do with the technologies we can create. Does it change how we want this kid to feel and think, how we want to treat him, once he has access to influence the world like you and I can – in both good and bad?

One of the great upsides of exponential technologies, the internet and transparency of information as perhaps the most significant one, is that we are more democratic than ever before. When horrible things happen, you no longer need to own a media empire to be able to tell the world about it and influence people. And have others react. All you need is access to the Internet. Your blog that you built using a free platform can attract more attention than a hugely sponsored story by the world’s biggest media enterprises.

The interesting part is: this very upside also makes the challenge larger than we perhaps have ever encountered before. Through all the times and cultures where clear hierarchies have predominated, only certain (groups of) people have been able to make their voice – and actions – heard. Now things are about to change, and have changed already, looking for example at the Arab Spring.

Curiously enough, the biggest challenges to the mankind in exponential technologies are not technological – but social. In that way, tech indeed is the easy part – whether talking about saving a company or the world. We are looking at a larger social challenge than ever before – comprising of seven billion people. How to tackle it? Can exponential technologies help us answer it?

I wrap up an intense and lively discussion with Haan by asking him the same question he asks everyone applying to join the Singularity University: when you have kept on rocking for the next 10 years and succeeded in making the things happen that are important to you, how will be the world be different?

“We no longer have the billion people without food, clean water and healthcare. And everyone is contributing to this world economically and socially. ” Simple as that. One exponential technology, and 7 billion people at the time.

The winner of Slush 100 pitching competition was revealed on Wednesday evening in front of a captivated full house at the Silver Stage. The winner is Enbrite.ly!

Enbrite.ly is offered a suprising €500 000 in investment. The amount was at first €250 000 but according to judges Ilkka Kivimäki and Riku Asikainen that was not enough.

“When we started about a week ago, I had a goal of 50 angels for a €250 000 grand prize. But this is Slush! I managed to get a bit more…”, said Asikainen.

“This is by far the biggest pitching prize ever given to anyone”, Asikainen stated.

The Co-Founder and Product Manager of Enbrite.ly Gergö Varga was absolutely overwhelmed about the awards and the experience.

“Thank you. Seriously this is the most humbling experience in my life, this is seriously awesome!,” he said.

“We have been here in Finland a month – we attended Startup Sauna, a special thanks to those guys – in a month, this happens! This is awesome, Slush is awesome, Finland is awesome!”

Enbrite.ly impressed the jury with their convincing pitch, functioning business model and awareness of the market.

The company is a Hungary-based startup aiming to make online traffic sources as transparent as possible. Accordingly, Enbrite.ly allows its customers to improve and optimize their online marketing actions through the utilization of big data and predictive analytics.

According to Co-Founder and Product Manager Georgö Varga, three out of ten clicks in the Internet are performed by non-humans, also referred to as “bots”. “We find humans on the Internet, and we believe in transparency”, Varga stated in his pitch.

“We really liked the team, it is an exciting market which is changing rapidly. You just nailed the pitch as well, well done!”, congratulated Asikainen from Finban.

The jury for the final in the Slush 100 pitching competition encompassed five experienced international investors: David Gardner, general partner at London Venture Partners, Riku Asikainen, chairman at Fiban, Chris Fralic, partner at First Round Capital, Ilkka Kivimäki, partner at Inventure and Steven Dietz, Partner and co-founder at Upfront Ventures.

Enbrite.ly is offered a €500 000 investment from the Finnish Business Angels Network and Evli, additionally the company will be awarded legal, audit and consulting services from Mäkitalo Rantanen & Co Ltd and PwC worth €10 000.

The Slush Team and an international jury of serial entrepreneurs and investors inspected and considered over 1000 startups, from which a lucky group of 100 startups were selected for the pitcing competition. Four startups took part in the final, the other finalists were lifestyle app CosmEthics, sustainable packackin producer RePack and virtual coding support Codementor.

Demo Showcase

The winner of Slush Demo Showcase is NA3M Games, which produces games about the Arab world, varying from racing to sporting games. NA3M Games, based in Copenhagen, Denmark and Amman, Jordan, was presented at Slush by the COO and General Manager of the company, Ryan Riegg.

The company was founded in early 2013 by Prince Fahan bin Faisal Al Saud, who has previously worked at Facebook and founded several tech companies, including Apiphany. The API management service was acquired by Microsoft in in 2013.

The winner of Demo Showcase was selected by the audience.

We here at Slush congratulate the winners!

Post edited by Liina Hilkamo on June 24th, 2015

]]>http://www.slush.org/winners-slush-are/feed/0People at Slushhttp://www.slush.org/people-slush-4/
http://www.slush.org/people-slush-4/#commentsWed, 19 Nov 2014 15:31:04 +0000http://www.slush.org/?p=14391Slush News decided to ask various Slush-goers about their thoughts on the event. We managed to find different kinds of people from volunteers to politicians – let’s have a look at what they had to say!

Sofia Ahanen works as a volunteer at the meeting area. She directs investors and startups to their meetings. “I wanted to volunteer because I genuinely like helping out and because there are so interesting people at this event. I have chatted with the investors, and they have been really satisfied with the service and were eager to hear more about volunteering at Slush.”

Darren Mowry (2nd from the right), the Regional Director for the Nordics at Amazon, thinks that Slush is a great opportunity to spend time with startups. “There are a lot of companies here trying to innovate and disrupt, and we want to figure out how to help them with our services. We can also connect customers with other customers,” he says. “It’s fun to tell people stuff they don’t know about Amazon”, the team continues.

Sophie Lafayette is in charge of social media at Funzi, a startup that enables you to develop your skills and learn through a mobile platform. Lafayette is the only Brit in a team of Finns, and she lives and works in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. “It’s really exciting to come to Slush and be surrounded by inspiring individuals and startups,” she smiles.

Jutta Urpilainen and Mikael Jungner, Finnish politicians from the Social Democrat Party, seemed very impressed by Slush. “The best thing at Slush is the feeling – the excitement makes you feel energized. Messukeskus has been beautifully transformed into a little village with cafés and stages,” says Urpilainen. Jungner thinks it’s great that there are lots of startups here who are creating services aiming to improve wellbeing and health. “This is also the first year when almost all of the CEOs of major Finnish companies are here hanging out in a relaxed manner, without ties,” he laughs.

Jussi Salonen works at the Consulate General of Finland in Los Angeles. He connects Finnish companies to the West Coast and vice versa. In his opinion, the most interesting thing at Slush is the feeling. “It’s great to see that the startup scene in Finland is buzzing in such a positive way. It’s like tech in California – people have their feet firmly in the air,” Salonen grins.

You can share your thoughts on Slush through social media by using the hashtag #slush14 in your posts.

Cover photo: Kai KuusistoOther photos: Joanna Mehtälä

]]>http://www.slush.org/people-slush-4/feed/0Prezi Announces $57M Investment and 50M Users at Slushhttp://www.slush.org/prezi-investment/
http://www.slush.org/prezi-investment/#commentsWed, 19 Nov 2014 14:09:05 +0000http://www.slush.org/?p=14431Today on the stage of Slush, Prezi’s CEO and co-founder Peter Arvai announced that the company behind the presentation platform has received a $57 million investment from Spectrum Equity and surpassed 50 million users, nearly doubling in the past twelve months.

Prezi is the presentation platform that helps people connect more powerfully with their audiences. With more than 160 million prezis created to date, the company says they have the world’s largest publicly available presentation database.

We caught up with Peter Arvai to talk about Prezi’s plans for the future.

Prezi was founded back in 2008 in Budapest during the biggest recession in Hungary. “We were three guys and we said: we want to take on Apple, Microsoft and Google. You can imagine what people’s reactions were.”

Today Prezi’s cloud-based software is used by over 50 million people to share their ideas in more compelling ways. “Prezi has reached beyond our wildest expectations,” commented Arvai on the company’s rapid global growth within the last year.

Fundamental appeal of Prezi, according to Arvai, is that it allows people to visualize their ideas. “Prezi creates the world where you are immersed. It creates more meaningful conversations.”

Prezi’s growth can also be attributed to business users looking for a more impactful way to present, which helps them land clients and train customers. 80% of all Fortune 500 companies have Prezi users, according to Arvai.

Prior to this investment, Prezi received $15,5M: “We haven’t actually touched a single dollar of it”, said Arvai. “The good news people are willing to pay for Prezi and they like using Prezi. We essentially feel that we want to have the muscle power to take advantage of any kind of opportunity.”

By this Arvai means hiring more people, continuing on building the great tool and potentially acquiring companies that will help Prezi advance on their mission “to help two billion people to share their ideas in a more meaningful way”.

“This round is a very clear indication that Prezi is a globally successful company. There isn’t a country in the world right now that doesn’t have Prezi users.”

“Prezi’s valuation increases very significantly,” shared Arvai in the interview with TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher onstage of Slush. When asked about the possibility of Microsoft acquiring Prezi Arvai said: “There are ways to set up acquisitions that help companies achieve their purpose. If there would be such an acquisition, we should have to consider that. I think about these things in a very opportunistic way.”

Advice from Peter Arvai: Think Big

“You have to think big even if you start in a small country. Don’t let the fact that you start in a smaller country like Hungary or Finland keep you from thinking globally.”

Arvai’s team has focused on the global market from the very first days: the first version of the product was in English and they only released the Hungarian version last year. “We started building Prezi in Budapest and we opened the office in San Francisco in our first year”, said Arvai.

“One market that can define global success that is the world’s largest market today–the US. If you want to create a global company it is very important that the first step is the largest market and from there you go global,” shares Peter Arvai.

Photos by Sami Välikangas and Kai Kuusisto

]]>http://www.slush.org/prezi-investment/feed/0Steven Dietz on Nailing Your VC Meetingshttp://www.slush.org/steven-dietz-nailing-vc-meetings/
http://www.slush.org/steven-dietz-nailing-vc-meetings/#commentsWed, 19 Nov 2014 13:59:09 +0000http://www.slush.org/?p=14402You have founded a startup with an enthusiastic and hard-working team of like-minded entrepreneurs. You are energized by an inspiring business idea that could potentially disrupt the industry you are operating in. You have mastered your pitch. Finally, the day has come for a meeting with a potential investor, and you are on the verge of taking a giant leap forward. But how do you nail a VC meeting?

#1: First Impression

Don’t send lengthy emails. Don’t contribute to the overwhelming information overload. Put a little more effort in reaching out to a potential investor. In fact, Steven Dietz uses introductory emails as the first filter in the funneling process.

Out of 4,100 business plans, 400 meetings are arranged, and out of those meetings, only ten lead to a future investment. That results in an investment rate of 2.5% of over 4,000 business plans and introductory emails. Cut through the noise and make yourself interesting from day one.

#2: Objective

The ultimate goal of a VC meeting is to establish a two-way dialogue between aspiring founders and investors. “Make us interested in learning more about your business”, Dietz states. “Establish a good dialogue, and you’re long ahead of competition.”

#3: Presentation

Best presentations do not involve any slides. You should be able to sell your idea through interactive and engaging dialogue. “In the end, we always invest in the individuals behind the venture. It’s really all about the team.”

#4: Team

Surround yourself with great people. Do you really understand this business? Does your team possess domain expertise in this particular field? “We’re always looking for easy ways to filter out startups, and meeting a team without charisma or healthy group dynamics makes the task a lot easier.” Bring one or two people from your team along – this way the investors will have a chance to see how your team works together.

#5: Business Opportunity

In the meeting, you should focus on the business opportunity of your company. What is the purpose of your venture? What problem are you willing to solve? “Most importantly, you need to be able to define your solution to a real problem very quickly and in an understandable way. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. If it takes longer, you really haven’t thought it through.”

#6: Why Now?

Although the “Why Now?” is rarely addressed in any presentation, Dietz asks this particular question in all of his meetings. “Ask yourself – why is this the right time? Why now and not two or three years ago?” Simply put, the timing needs to be right. Spend enough time to think about this, and you will have more room for dialogue in the meeting.

#7: Market Size

“I usually lose interest at this exact point”, Dietz points out. Make sure you know the numbers. Without feasible numbers and analytics behind your venture, the meeting will go from good to bad in seconds. What is your total market size? What size of the market are you truly capable of addressing with your business plan?

#8: Competition

Competition will always be present in the game. But do you really understand your competition? Are you able to differentiate your company from the rest? “If you don’t fully understand your competition, you will have a hard time getting an investor on board.”

#9: Business Model

You should always have a clearly crafted business model, but it shouldn’t include too much detail. There is no need to bring packed Excel sheets into the first meeting. “For the next three years, you should be able to calculate the following numbers – revenue, COGS, operating expenses, and cash burn. That’s all you need.”

#10: Raising

In the meeting, talk about what you are going to prove and accomplish with your venture. Do not point out what you are going to do with the money. “After all, you should leave us investors with the feeling of tremendous urgency. We should feel the need to act fast.”